


Home for Christmas

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Abuse, but nothing explicit or even specific
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2212452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius calls Courfeyrac.  And Courfeyrac can't do anything to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a tumblr prompt and then eirenical very nicely suggested that a sequel would be appreciated. So I figured why not, might as well post it to AO3.

"Courf." Marius’s voice sounds strangled, even through the tinny filter of a cheap cell phone microphone.

"Hey, Marius." Courfeyrac pushes back his chair from the table, managing to communicate  _Sorry, Mom and Dad, I know it’s Christmas Eve_ and _the first meal with all of us back home together, but this is possibly really important and I have to at least find out_  entirely through facial expressions and gestures. He silently bounds up the stairs and steps into the first bedroom he reaches, closing the door behind him. “How’s it going?”

"Not. great." Marius manages. Courfeyrac hears two long, deliberate breaths, then Marius continues. "I thought I could do this, I really did. I—I wanted to. But I can’t—" His voice soars and cracks on the last few words, and Courfeyrac hesitates, unsure whether his friend is looking for  _You_ can _, Marius, I know you can do it. You’re stronger than you think_  or for  _Then get out of there._

"I can’t imagine how hard that must be," Courfeyrac says, taking a middle road until he can judge Marius’s status more accurately. "It’s not fair that you have to deal with all that. What do you … what do you want to do now? What can I do?"

"Please come get me." The misery in Marius’s voice makes Courfeyrac’s decision unquestionable.

"Absolutely. I’ll—" Courfeyrac stops, his heart plummeting into his stomach. "Fuck," he whispers. "Marius, I … I can’t."

"Oh," Marius gulps, and the too-sudden calm in his voice is  _heartbreaking._ “Okay. Yes, you’re right, I should—”

"No,  _no!_  You  _shouldn’t_ , you shouldn’t have to, none of this is how it should be. I _want_ to get you out of there, I wish I could. It’s just. Our car. My father hit a deer on the way home from church tonight, and the car is wrecked. Totaled. We had to leave it in a ditch and walk the last quarter mile home. It’s the only car we have—and all the shops are closed, it won’t be fixed until Tuesday at the earliest—I’m  _so sorry,_ Marius!”

There’s a quiet sniffle from the other end of the phone line. “Is there anyone else who can get you?” Courfeyrac asks. “Someone you can ask to bring you over here?” He knows there’s not. Marius doesn’t talk a lot about his childhood, but Courfeyrac knows he doesn’t have any friends. And they are the only ones among their group of college friends who live on this side of the country.

"Do you want to stay on the phone with me?" Courfeyrac suggests. "I can talk as long as you need."

"N-no," Marius says. "It’s okay. I have to save my minutes. I don’t have many left."

"Can you get on the house phone? Or Skype?"

Marius is already collecting himself, his voice getting quieter and quicker, the way Courfeyrac hates—because he knows it doesn’t mean he’s okay, in fact it means just the opposite. “No, I’d better not. He’ll just be more annoyed. Look, I’d better go. Sorry for—I probably interrupted—”

"You didn’t interrupt anything important," Courfeyrac says quickly. "You never could—there is nothing more important to me than the people I love being okay. You know that, right? You can call me  _anytime_ , I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night, or Christmas day, or whatever. If you need  _anything_ , or just to talk, call me.”

"Okay, I—I’d better go," Marius says, still in that high, taut voice.

"You’re going to be okay," Courfeyrac tells him, putting all the sincerity he can into his voice in hopes that if he says it well enough, it’ll be true. "I’m coming to get you the second our car is fixed, and you can call me—or anyone—if you ever need to talk to someone, and you’re going to be okay."

Marius mutters a quick, choked “Thanks,” and hangs up, leaving Courfeyrac staring down at the screen of his phone. “Please, be okay,” he whispers.


	2. Chapter 2

Courfeyrac stands on the doorstep of Marius’s house, bouncing on his toes and crushing his hands into his armpits to ward off hypothermia. He loves a white Christmas, but the snow whipping around him, saturating his hair and creeping in at the back of his collar, is fast approaching blizzard levels. And after an hour-and-a-half drive in a truck with no heat, he was already chilled to the bone before he got to the Pontmercy porch.

He scrunches up his shoulders to bury his face in his scarf and wonders whether he should ring the doorbell a second time. Maybe they didn’t hear it. Maybe they’re not home at all.

He doesn’t know where else they would be—it’s not like Marius and his grandfather have any extended family for them to visit on Christmas day, and everything in the nearest town is surely shut down on account of the storm, if it wasn’t already closed for the holiday. But Marius still hasn’t answered his text, and Courfeyrac can’t help worrying about what could have gone wrong—even if none of the situations that occur to him are at all realistic.

Maybe he should have waited for Marius to answer, he reflects as he leans on the doorbell again. Ordinarily, he would have let Marius take the lead, let him decide for himself what he needed. But his voice the night before had been so miserable, that when salvation appeared in his cousin Manuel’s beat-up old truck he’d acted without thinking. They’d expected the New Haven relatives to just bring the one car—a gorgeous silver BMW that Courfeyrac (still shackled with a family reputation for recklessness based on a  _single incident_  with a scooter, and that when he was  _eight_ ) would never in a million years be allowed to borrow. But Manuel had, for logistical reasons that remained foggy to Courfeyrac, decided to drive up separately in his truck, and it took only a few minutes of begging and comical Bambi eyes to convince him to hand over the keys.

A few yards away, the garage door clattered open without warning, startling Courfeyrac. He looked down the driveway and saw a sleek black car slowly coming up it, the pur of the engine muffled by the snow and wind. It paused in front of the garage, and the passenger door opened and Marius stumbled out into the snow, clutching a red plastic bag full of chinese takeout containers to his chest.

"Courfeyrac?" He asked as he waded along the front walk. "What are you doing here?"

"Didn’t you get my text?"

"Ah—no, I—my phone’s charging, I forgot it when we went out."

"My cousin lent me his truck," Courfeyrac explained. "I came to get you, to bring you home to celebrate Christmas with my family after all."

Marius’s face flushed up to his ears. “I,” he mumbled. “It’s fine, really. I was just overreacting, I’m sure, I—”

"You weren’t. You never are." Courfeyrac put as much force into his voice as he could manage with chattering teeth. "Marius, I know you. You always _under_ react, if anything. Please, come home with me?”

Marius hesitated, snow fluttering off his lashes as he blinked fast. “Um. Okay.”

Marius lets Courfeyrac in and then leaves him in the living room (parlor? Courfeyrac isn’t sure if people still have parlors these days, but the room certainly doesn’t look lived in.) with his grandfather while he goes upstairs to pack his things. Courfeyrac, torn between a deep resentment for the man who’s been so cruel to his friend and the desire that if he shows that resentment, it could make his friend’s situation worse, lets the manners that have been hammered into him since he was a child take over, carrying on awkward small talk with just enough politeness that the old man won’t resent his grandson’s friends. Yes, classes are going well, very well. He doesn’t play any sports, but he does report on them for the school newspaper. No, he doesn’t really have an opinion on the nightlife around campus—you see, he’s very active in the theater department, and rehearsals and productions take up most of his evenings.

Marius reappears at the bottom of the stairs, a small duffle bag slung over his shoulder, and says and awkward goodbye to his grandfather, in which the duration of his visit to Courfeyrac’s family isn’t mentioned with any kind of specificity. The grandfather says goodbye gruffly, and not the hollywood movie gruffness that hides a soft interior, but an indifferent brusqueness that says his mind more focused on the lunch sitting on the kitchen counter.

And then they’re free, bumping along deserted roads in the noisy old truck, Courfeyrac squinting to see through the blowing snow and laughing triumphantly.

Marius is shaking. “I did that all wrong,” he mutters. “He’s more upset now, I’m sure he is.”

"He’s not," Courfeyrac assures him. "He didn’t mind." Marius makes a noncommittal noise between chattering teeth, a noise that says  _I don’t believe you for a moment but you’re my friend and I can’t tell you that._  “Hey, believe me,” Courfeyrac insists. “I’m good a reading people, remember? It’s okay, he doesn’t care. And anyway, you’re out of the house.”

"Yes," Marius says, nodding emphatically. "I am."

"You’re going home with me, and we’re going to be home in time for dinner—we eat late on Christmas—and we’re going to spend the rest of Christmas break sleeping in until noon and watching movies and going sledding with my sisters and it’ll be so much fun."

"Yes," Marius says again.

They lapse into silence—or at least, an absence of speech, punctuated by the vigorous pumping of the windshield wipers, which are making a valiant (but doomed) effort to keep the windshield clear of snow. A glance out of the corner of his eye tells Courfeyrac his friend has stopped shaking, although his face still looks tense.

"My whole family thinks you’re my boyfriend," he says in the silence. "By the way."

Marius makes a choking noise.

"I mean, I told them you’re not," Courfeyrac adds quickly. "I certainly didn’t say anything about—about you. Or anything that would give them that idea. But, well … rushing off on Christmas day to pick up a friend an hour and a half away and bring him home for the rest of break … I mean, you see how they get the idea." Marius is silent—but that’s not unusual for him, and he doesn’t  _seem_  to be terribly upset. Or even particularly awkwarded out. “They’re excited, actually,” Courfeyrac continues. “Ever since I came out to them last year, my aunts have been just itching for me to bring home a nice boy for them to pamper and tease. So, I mean, they’re cool with it. Or, they would be cool with it, if. But don’t worry, I told them you’re a shy little  _gringo_  and they have to promise to not embarass you or you’ll never come back. So they’ll just give you tons of food. I, uh, hope you’re hungry.”

"We didn’t eat yet," Marius says, managing a feeble smile. "The restaurant was closing, so we got takeout. We were going to eat when we got home."

"Good, so you’ll be ready." Courfeyrac grins at him. "They’re going to love you—a polite, skinny little boy with a bottomless stomach." He hesitates. "You know, if you want I can talk to them about it again—if you don’t want them to think that we’re dating. I mean, if it bothers you."

"N-no. I don’t mind." Marius’s face instantly flushes bright pink. "I mean, not that I want them to think we’re dating, that would be kind of awkward, wouldn’t it, I mean not that—you’re great, Courfeyrac, but I—"

Courfeyrac laughs. “It’s okay, we’ve had this conversation before. I don’t care either, if they think we’re dating—I’d be proud to be dating someone as cute and smart as you. But the whole thing might be easier if my aunts aren’t trying to lock us in closets together for the next two days. So if you want, we could make up a fake girlfriend for you—someone back at school—to make sure to mention.” He hesitates. “Or a fake boyfriend.”

Marius’s blush spreads to his ears, but he’s smiling shyly behind his scarf. “Okay.”

He’s shaking again, Courfeyrac notices, but it looks like it’s not from nerves anymore. “Cold?” he asks.

"Yeah. Is the—"

"Yeah, the heat’s broken—sorry. But there’s hot chocolate there for you." He motions with his chin toward the travel mugs wedged into the crack between the seat bottom and back. "It should still be hot; my dad swears these mugs are magic."

Marius takes a tentative sip. “Magic,” he agrees. “Almost hot enough to burn my mouth on still.”

"It’s a Christmas miracle," Courfeyrac singsongs. "I come to you in the storm, bearing tidings of hot chocolate in the midst of the bleakest midwinter."

And Marius’s laugh, when it rings out in the freezing air, is free and real and worth driving twice as far.


End file.
